The Thing

we live in an age of movies-as-fan-fiction. it's really depressing.

― soon to be major motion picture starring john wayne (latebloomer), Sunday, October 10, 2010 12:40 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

otm

prequel is worse, it's true! can nothing remain mystery? fan-fiction with big budget! gahhhh
i do wish it could be good, as i wish all sci-fi movies could be good. but then, i wished so hard about Alien 4. never forget.

gotta say, wtf is with that brutalist ice tunnel they are running through. did antarctic researchers really have time to hire architects to stylize their bases.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9c/The_Thing_From_Another_World_01.jpg

this is pretty awesome

I mean, the picture. haven't read the comic

gotta say, wtf is with that brutalist ice tunnel they are running through. did antarctic researchers really have time to hire architects to stylize their bases.

― dayo, Sunday, October 10, 2010 4:47 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

I think it's supposed to be the Thing's spaceship they're running through

why can't they just make their own damn movie

that is my basic question

Is that one of the Daft Punk guys on dayo's poster?

Also, did anyone else think about warning the people in the screenshot about facehuggers?

Just re-reading this whole thread, and saw this: i suspect childs's thing-dom is kept exactly as ambiguous (and remember someone finds a bit of mac's torn clothing: so he's not out of the picture, just cz he's the hero => yes he's behaving mac-like, but then the thing-that-became-mac WOULD, to fool the others or fool us!!)

Mac and Childs both passed the blood test, yo. Childs gets separated during the whole final battle thing, so the audience can assume some ambiguity there, but I don't think Mac is ever off-screen after he passes the blood test.

I would totally see this if they'd called it "..And Another Thing"

Or "You've got another thing coming"

"That Thing You Do"

I don't thing so.

There's SomeThing About Mary

"That Thing You Do"

ha ha, rom com version

infected dog escaping from Norwegian helicopter, taking shelter in US base = "meet cute"

you guys who're all like "why can't they make their own movie" understand that Carpenter's Thing was...a remake...right

Yeah that's been pretty well established!

If any of the recent spate of remakes/prequels/"re-boots" of old horror movies had been any good I think more of us would be optimistic!

^ this. The Thing is a good, 80s interpretation of a cold-war horror original, neither detracting from it nor losing out because of it. in that, it can stand on its own form of originality (much like The Fly did). whereas current remakes (lol of 80s remakes or not) have little to do with 'interpretation' and creating their own real of-the-now qualities, and much more to do with studio quotas. sure, i wish this new movie was from the heart of hollywood magic but, uh.

but hey, maybe the pairing of the screenwriter for the new Nightmare on Elm Street AND the new Final Destination + a some-time screenwriter for Battlestar, with a first-time feature director will have created the combo we're looking for

we all gotta start somewhere!

seriously though, i mean, john carpenter actually directed B horror movies in the 60s! i feel like his The Thing was more like 'let me show you how i can do it better' - and now we've gone back to hacking out half-assed stuff that isn't about doing better except in the special effects dept.

Real of-the-now qualities? What if this time, in the prequel, we find out that the first movie was a dream (Inception) by the team that dug up the creature, that was actually buried under the ice by the Vatican in the middle ages because it was the illegitimate child of Jesus and Mary Magdalen (Da Vinci Code) and by waking it up they start the Apocalyps, that will end the world in 2012? (oh, and there should be a diversion about terrorists too, obv. - maybe one of the team should be a muslim who jokes about bombs all the time)

?

what if it turns out the thing was brought to earth on a predator ship

fuck washing a post-post-modernism

maybe this is actually the next bourne movie

That Bourne Thing You Do (romantic horror sci-fi comedy)

That Bourne Thing You Do To Me (the pr0n parody remake)

Bourne Again would be a good title for the inevitable 2022 franchise reboot starting Frankie Muniz.

If any of the recent spate of remakes/prequels/"re-boots" of old horror movies had been any good I think more of us would be optimistic!

Exactly! They're all half-arsed plot + reuse of dialogue from first film + ironic winks at audience + stunt casting

Carpenter's remake took the basic idea and ran with it in all sorts of interesting new ways, with some really quite startling effects

ugh

http://io9.com/5659983/they-live-remake-might-ditch-the-infamous-alien-sunglasses

seriously though, i mean, john carpenter actually directed B horror movies in the 60s!

erm, carpenter didn't direct his first feature film until 1974 (Dark Star) and didn't make a horror movie until 1978 (Halloween)

Well, yes but he did direct short films; they are technically movies (and not tv)

Whatever the case, he had ideas, man

oh fer sure, i mean halloween alone is a game changer

erm, carpenter didn't direct his first feature film until 1974 (Dark Star) and didn't make a horror movie until 1978 (Halloween)

― Ward Fowler, Monday, October 11, 2010 11:46 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

why didn't you just say "until 1978 (Oct. 31)" if you're trying to be so accurate

lol

dbl lol

the 'funny' 'thing' is, until the carpenter movie halloween wasn't really 'celebrated' here in the uk - and it took ET to really popularise trick or treating. i love seeing our supermarkets full of spooky crap, so god bless you john carpenter

Amazed to find that this movie received such negative reviews when it was released.

Watched the film last night and really was struck by how skilled and confident Carpenter was when he made his great 80s films. What the heck happened after They Live?

He still had one more great one in In The Mouth Of Madness, but yeah, ever since it's been pretty dire. Even his lauded material for the "Masters of Horror" series was basically shitty.

Love it.

I think what happened is that Carpenter got old but, like so many of his peers (Romero, Craven, et al.) , no longer had the vision or energy to make something great on a low-budget. So many of his later movies are like half-assed big-budget aspirants hampered by their limited resources. I mean, I can only guess how much more "Escape from LA" cost than "Escape from NY," and the difference between those two says it all, really.

the great aspect of this film is really all in the casting and the characterization. you've got a bunch of dudes who are already bored and trapped by their situation, some of whom clearly don't like each other already and some of whom are power-tripping or misanthropic or weak-willed, others who are utter pros and smart as hell. it's essentially '12 Angry Men' vs a super fucked-up alien.

YES!

this film is perfect

the making-of featurette on the DVD is probably the best one of those I have ever seen (except for maybe Tron)

The Thing: A 140,000-Year-Old Organism Discovered in Antarctica's Ice-Shrouded Lake Vostok

An ancient living laboratory of our planet's past in Antarctica may have provided a preview of what we can expect to find deep below the barren surface of Mars and in the ice-shrouded seas of Jupiter's Europa. Two of the world's leading experts on life at the lower temperature extremes, Buford Price of the University of California, Berkeley and Todd Sowers of Penn State observed that microbes colonizing life appear to have two levels of metabolism: a survival metabolism in which they remain alive but become dormant until exposed to nutrients or higher temperatures, or, a maintenance metabolism for steady sustained growth.

The team observed that some organisms in permafrost appear to have "protein repair enzymes that maintain active recycling of certain amino acids needed for cell repair for at least 30,000 years." They added that the "extremely low expenditures of survival energy enable microbial communities in extreme environments to survive indefinitely."

In the Antarctic's ancient ice-bound Lake Vostok they reported that nitrifying bacteria with low but active metabolisms have been found encased in liquid veins at minus 40 degrees F for more than 140,000 years. And, it takes about 108 years for carbon to turn over in the cells.

They projected from their conclusions that life moving so slowly that it appears to be frozen, dormant, or undectable may survive in the cold, icy and "cosmically radioactive conditions of outer space."

so fuckin awesome